| Literature DB >> 30524318 |
Rebecca McKetin1,2,3, Alexandra Voce3, Richard Burns3, Robert Ali4, Dan I Lubman5, Amanda L Baker6, David J Castle7,8.
Abstract
The inability to distinguish clearly between methamphetamine-related psychosis and schizophrenia has led to the suggestion that "methamphetamine psychosis" does not represent a distinct diagnostic entity but rather that the drug has triggered a vulnerability to schizophrenia. We tested this possibility by exploring the latent class structure of psychotic symptoms amongst people who use the drug and examining how these latent symptom profiles correspond to a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Latent class analysis was carried out on the lifetime psychotic symptoms of 554 current methamphetamine users, of whom 40 met the DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia. Lifetime diagnoses of schizophrenia and individual psychotic symptoms were assessed using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. The chosen model found 22% of participants had a high propensity to experience a wide range of psychotic symptoms (schizophrenia-like), whereas the majority (56%) more specifically experienced persecutory delusions and hallucinations (paranoid psychosis) and had a lower probability of these symptoms than the schizophrenia-like class. A third class (22%) had a low probability of all symptoms, with the exception of 34% reporting persecutory delusions. Participants in the schizophrenia-like class were more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia (26 vs. 3 and 1% for each of the other classes, p < 0.001) but the diagnosis failed to encompass 74% of this group. These results are consistent with there being a distinction between schizophrenia and methamphetamine-related psychotic symptoms, both in terms of the propensity to experience psychotic symptoms, as well as the symptom profile; however, this distinction may not be captured well by existing diagnostic classifications.Entities:
Keywords: amphetamine-related disorders; diagnosis; methamphetamine; psychosis; psychotic disorders; schizophrenia
Year: 2018 PMID: 30524318 PMCID: PMC6262399 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00578
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Front Psychiatry ISSN: 1664-0640 Impact factor: 4.157
Participant characteristics by latent class.
| Persecutory delusions | 98 | 80 | 34 | 74 |
| Delusions of reference | 54 | 10 | 0 | 18 |
| Thought projection | 74 | 12 | 1 | 23 |
| Thought interference | 63 | 4 | 0 | 16 |
| Delusions of passivity | 58 | 5 | 1 | 16 |
| Other delusions | 75 | 27 | 2 | 32 |
| Visual hallucinations | 70 | 49 | 0 | 43 |
| Complex auditory hallucinations | 74 | 17 | 3 | 27 |
| Other auditory hallucinations | 11 | 36 | 0 | 23 |
| Other hallucinations | 85 | 67 | 0 | 56 |
| Age (median years) | 33 | 33 | 35 | 34 |
| Male (%) | 71 | 69 | 75 | 71 |
| Years of schooling (median) | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Unemployed (%) | 82 | 75 | 73 | 76 |
| Immigrant (%) | 17 | 8 | 12 | 11 |
| Duration of use (median years) | 15 | 14 | 15 | 14 |
| Days of use (median) | 14 | 15 | 13 | 14 |
| Injecting (%) | 80 | 71 | 71 | 73 |
| SDS score (%) | 9 | 8 | 7 | 8 |
| Dependent (%) | 81 | 79 | 74 | 78 |
| Tobacco | 98 | 93 | 96 | 95 |
| Cannabis | 82 | 79 | 78 | 79 |
| Alcohol | 72 | 69 | 61 | 68 |
| Ecstasy | 15 | 25 | 14 | 21 |
| Cocaine | 20 | 23 | 20 | 21 |
| Hallucinogens | 6 | 7 | 6 | 6 |
| Inhalants | 6 | 7 | 2 | 6 |
| Heroin | 28 | 33 | 30 | 31 |
| No. other drug classes used in past month (mean) | 3.3 | 3.4 | 3.1 | 3 |
| DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia (%) | 26 | 3 | 0 | 7 |
p < 0.05,
p < 0.01,
p < 0.001, relative to the schizophrenia-like class.
p < 0.05,
p < 0.001, relative to the paranoid psychosis class.
Tactile, gustatory or olfactory.
Model fit statistics for latent class analysis.
| Class membership | 1. | 1. |
| Bootstrap LRT ( | −7475 (< 0.001) | −7119 (< 0.001) |
| Entropy | 0.796 | 0.761 |
| AIC/Adjusted BIC | 5498/5522 | 5384/5421 |
| VLMR LRT ( | −7475 (< 0.001) | −7119 (0.003) |
Akaike's information criterion (AIC), Bayesian information criterion (BIC), Voung-Lo-Mendell-Rubin (VLMR), likelihood ratio test (LRT).
Figure 1Lifetime symptom prevalence for the three-class model.
Figure 2Venn diagram showing overlap between the schizophrenia-like class and a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia.